I speak at a lot of great events, but it’s rare that an event does absolutely everything well. beyond tellerrand gets top marks in all categories. […] beyond tellerrand should be on your list for next year.

beyond tellerrand // DÜSSELDORF – 5 years

Over the last 5 years of running beyond tellerrand full time I learned so many things and my time management got better and better. It is different if you run an event as side project, like I did in the ten years before beyond tellerrand. All of a sudden you think you have plenty of time as you just have to runs this one event, right? But that is a bad pitfall. The difficulty actually is to manage the time that you have now and not to get distracted with other stuff – and I am so easily to distract.

I start planning and organising beyond tellerrand in Düsseldorf right when the last one ended. I take notes about what to improve and collect and evaluate the feedback given. I ask speakers even earlier, if they like to come, as the event landscape is really busy nowadays and their schedule fills up quickly. From October on I start to fully focus on the organisation of #btconf Düsseldorf. The amount of things to be done, smaller and bigger, is enormous. This year the new website ate so much of my time, that I am way behind my schedule. That means a lot of nightshifts to get back on track, but I know why I do it.

I’m simply always excited like a little school boy. Excited if people will like again what I am doing. Excited if they find the little things I changed and improved. Excited to finally see the result of all the work, that went into the event.

5 years – really?

Over the five years of running beyond tellerrand, so many happy accidents made it special. Accidents, that I am not able to plan, like the fantastic “talk” of Josh Brewer, in which he sung his hole presentation, because Meagan Fisher covered everything that he wanted to talk about. But I also play with ideas and plan a lot of things, like choosing the wonderful Maciej Ceglowski and his talk “The Internet With a Human Face” as closing talk of #btconf Düsseldorf 2014. What I can’t plan and don’t know beforehand is, if this talk will be like it turned out in the end – what a great talk.

Events is meeting old and new friends. [Photo: Stefan Nitzsche – http://stn.my]

I also enjoy to being able to invite friends to my little party, put them on stage, and share this with everybody. The very first talk at beyond tellerrand was a talk by Chris Heilmann. There is not much, that is better than being able to invite people like him. I know Chris since many many years and slept under or on tables with him (not actually with) on several demos parties back in the good old C64 days.

Some of the speakers I do not know that long before I invite them, of course. Especially as my aim is not to get the same people back on stage over and over again. But those mostly leave as friends afterwards. And that is what makes our industry, our community special. It is not just the work that interests us, but also the life and the person behind it.

I am very much looking forward to see you at beyond tellerrand in May and/or November this year already and I hope you are going to enjoy the days and what I planned. Check out who is on board for beyond tellerrand // DÜSSELDORF and get one of the few tickets left. Maybe you also want to have a look at who’s coming to beyond tellerrand // BERLIN already? … you know, I am always too excited.